With his “One Belt, One Road” initiative (OBOR) Chinese president Xi Jinping is reviving the old Silk Road. The Chinese artist Chen Nong (50) has these last few years been inspired by the Silk Road. While Xi Jinping is pursuing the extension and strengthening of the political and economic power of the Middle Kingdom, Chen Nong is from his historical perspective first of all empowering the image.

The early silk trade was carried on against incredible odds by great caravans of merchants and animals, traveling over some of the most inhospitable territory on earth. From China the Silk Road led via India and Persia further to Baghdad, Damascus and Constantinople on the banks of the Bosporus. In the second century before the Christian era the Silk Road was travelled for the first time by the Chinese emissary Zhang Qian,who was sent by Emperor Wudi (141 - 87 BC) of the Han Dynasty on this mission. The Silk Road became the most important trade route as well as instrument for cross-cultural exchange between the Far East and the West.

Chen Nong became internationally recognized with his hand-painted photographs depicting events from the rich Chinese history. His series of works about the eight most important farmer rebellions on the banks of the Yellow River during the past 2000 years drew a lot of attention at his solo exhibition at Reflex Amsterdam in 2012.

With his series about the Silk Road Chen Nong conjures up images of fabulous cities and exotic regions of long gone empires and great conquerors. Against the backdrop of ruins from the period of the Silk Road in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang Chen Nong illustrates the decoration of his imaginative and colorful stories.

Apart from his wondrous images about the Silk Road, Chen Nong also shows works of his series “Scenes of Reflections”. With this impressive series Chen Nong refers to Buddhism and Zen in Chinese culture and history.

Born in Fuzhou of Fujian Province, China, Chen Nong worked for a TV production before he started to do sculptures in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In 1996 he established a photo studio in Fuzhou, and in 2000 a photo studio in Hutong café in Beijing, the city where he currently lives and works. Chen Nong’s works are included in international collections, such as the International Center of Photography, New York, National Museum of Art, Australia, Museum of Cultures, Basel, Museum of Art, Harvard University, and St. Barbara Museum, California. The San Francisco MoMA recently acquired eight works of the artist.

“Whenever I couldn't sleep at night, I would go for a walk along the river opposite my house. In the dark landscape the water was black and little lights twinkled in it. I took photos of the water surface with my phone. Using the flash created fascinating images”.

As an artist, Ronald Zuurmond sees these images as ‘gifts’ that chance has thrown into his lap. He makes grateful use of the coincidental sightings and subsequently of his painting technique. Coincidence and technique, he has them both at his disposal. In the studio these nocturnal observations, visions from a dream almost, are developed into a series of paintings. In series form, as he has enjoyed working for the past year.

Ronald Zuurmond needs structure. The coincidental observation from nature becomes an artistic tool in the mind and hands of the painter. This need for order and structure probably has its roots in his earlier academic studies (sociology). Zuurmond is continually questioning himself and tries to find answers and solutions in his systematic research into the same subject. The series of flower motifs could just as easily emanate from nature as from his fantasy or dream world. Reality and imagination, choice and coincidence, artistic inspiration, knowledge and technique, the artist uses these circumstances and this craftsmanship as tools for his paintings to an equal degree.

For the past year Ronald Zuurmond has been working with renewed vitality on an exceptional series of paintings in which this new reality is portrayed astonishingly well and beautifully:
Reality Imagined.

“Through drawing, performance, music, installation, and film, Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Pertuis, France) crafts fictional adventures full of chance occurrences and wonders that nonetheless carry with them the potential for mishap or misfortune. Through lighting, color, texture, costume, soundtrack, and props, she creates transgressive, funny, and highly stylized visual settings that owe more to theater than to conventional narrative cinema. Curnier Jardin’s stories reveal a fascination with monsters, decorative objects, and animals, although her work expresses a particular awareness of the roles women have played in mythology, folklore, and conventional narrative cinema, roles that are commonly stereotyped as saint, witch, mother, or mystic.
Curnier Jardin supports a generous, intelligent, non‐systematic vision of continuity between human and nonhuman bodies—humans consume dirt, cave walls dance, a pear is covered with hair. While humans take on animal qualities, things take on human traits, such as love and longing. Usually associated with femininity and passivity, she looks to passion—traditionally opposed to “masculine” reason—as primary to sensations, perceptions, and the subject’s—or object’s—potential for action. More broadly, her work confounds the logic that divides human and nonhuman, rationality and emotion, sacred and profane, ally and enemy, masculine and feminine, showing instead how each is capable of interacting and combining.By blending the sound and meaning of distinct words and mixing disparate ideas, characters, and environments, her work serves as a receptacle for new kinds of speech, new ways of using language, and new kinds of meaning. Her expansive “portmanteau” approach opens up possibilities for an alternative realm in which speaking is a fundamental fact about rocks and plants, animals and things, and where otherwise marginalized human voices, ethnicities, and desires have, in the words of filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, “alternatives, possibilities, and the freedom to do wonderful things.” (excerpts of text by Alise Upitis, MIT List Visual Center, February 2014)
Pauline Curnier Jardin presents an installation: Explosion Ma Baby: A drum solo, fireworks, bells, streamer explosions, chants and a marching band set the quick pulse of Explosion Ma Baby. The film’s footage was shot at the same hour of the same day five years in a row during an annual procession. In the dolores space she will be showing a selection of work related to her current presentation at the Venice Biennale, Grotta Profunda Approfondita.
Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, France) is an Amsterdam/Berlin-based artist working across installation, performance, film and drawing. In 2008 she began creating a series of ‘movie-performances’ (Ah Jeanne!, LOV and TVO and The White Ferrals) which combine cinema and stage narrative. She went on to experiment with the format of an ‘objects optic opera’ (Le Salon d’Alone, 2010), as well as an ethnographic peep show (Ami [friend], 2010). Curnier Jardin extends her work with performance into her short films Grotta Profunda (2011), Hearts of Flint (2012), Bloodbad Parade (2014) and The Resurrection Plot (2015), the latter initially commissioned by RoseLee Goldberg and Charles Aubin as a live theatrical work that served as a central event in the 2015 Performa Biennial. Her work has also been presented at Fondation Cartier, Paris (2015); MIT List Visual Center, Cambridge (2014); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2012); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2010), ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe (2010). She is currently on view at the Venice Biennial- Arsenale (2017). She is selected for the Prix Fondation d’Enterprise Ricard 2017, and will feature in the upcoming Frieze Film London, as well as in Fiac Cinephemere program, next to her presentation in Ellen de Bruijne Projects booth 1.H04.

There are moments in life in which you notice your own dullness and ignorance. As I really like late and extensive breakfast, maybe only a year ago I told some friends that one should invent a mix of breakfast and lunch, which then should be called: brun…. Ouch, here it is! Painful epiphany.

I used to have an old phone that ran out of storage making it impossible to install the most recent software updates. Therefore I saw some emojis as question marks in squares, couldn’t play slow-mo videos properly or received messages from friends as answers to images I sent: ‚Loved an image‘.
In the beginning I was rather confused as different people seemed to send me this message - independently of one another, obviously.
Juliette started to really like that phrase and quickly followed up with ‚Laughed at an image‘ or ‚Emphasized an image‘ - I liked it too and started using it. I don’t exactly know how I figured, but at some point this year I realized that it was my not-up-to-date phone that wrote ‚Loved an image‘,. The person who sent it to me actually just hovered over the image and - with a choice of expressions - chose ‚Loved an image‘, which would create a little heart above the photo instead of spelling it out. Here it is again: painful epiphany!

It isn’t really pleasant to realize your own ignorance, yet it can be very funny and entertaining for all parties. Like smashing your coccyx: it hurts, it really hurts, but you can’t help but laugh. It’s like slight memories from last night coming back, you don’t really want to have them back, or you are scared because you think you don’t really want them back, you begin to feel the embarrassment that crawls slowly through your body and back into your brain.
‚Loved an image‘ however became a truism that Juliette would then keep writing, it became a way to bypass the classic like/dislike gesture and to actually focus on the image.

These images started to become black screens with white phrases. They could be seen as subtitles. But then: where was the image? The image doesn't really matter as the note creates an image - mostly of those memories you tend to forget. The image becomes a text, respectively was a text, is a text. Fragments from conversations, messages, mails, quotes from songs, books, films, her own films. Taken out of their context, used as clichés: ‚Hope I didn’t say the wrong thing‘, ‚I’m really sorry about yesterday‘, ‚It was wild‘…
Phrases that individually create images for each person - a black screen as substitute for actual green screens in which the movie industry transfers whatever they want. Juliette’s black notes function in the exact same way. Does it even make sense to discuss one’s image with another? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Either way those works create a very intimate moment in which each and everyone is alone, in a sincere moment of personal thoughts.

‚They should grow on you’

Where is it from? Is it a quote? What is she referring to?

Juxtaposing cacti drawings and watercolors might give an answer to this note, but then again what’s the context between a spring fountain in the shape of a fish with the water coming out of the mouth and ‚you feeling ok after the weekend?‘.

I just bought a new phone with ultra hd camera and all kinds of possibilities that most of my friends can’t receive.

‚You win’…

[Felix Gaudlitz]

About the artist:
Loved an Image is Juliette Blightman's first solo show in the Netherlands. Blightman is a British artist living and working in Berlin. The main theme of her work is the relationship between art and life, she creates her works like ongoing journal entries articulated in different media, a life examined, radical subjectivity and the personal made public. Juliette Blightman photographs, paints, ﬁlms, writes, and performs the slow practice of everyday life with all its dance parties. She earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London in 2003 and a Master in Fine Arts at University of the Arts, London/Central St. Martins in 2007.

Blightman’s work has appeared in international publications such as ArtForum, Frieze, Texte Zur Kunst and Starship. She has given a series of performance lectures at the following Universities: Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, UDK Berlin, University Mozarteum Salzburg, Royal College of Art, London, NYU Berlin and Weissensee Kunsthochschule Berlin.

Ola Vasiljeva The Dong with A Luminous Nose

Sep 9 - Oct 21, 2017

Ola Vasiljeva creates a new installation in the front space of the gallery.

Stepping into an exhibition by Ola Vasiljeva feels like becoming part of a short story, entering in the midst of it. The Dong with the Luminous Nose introduces an environment filled with objects and structures as clues of overlapping narratives.
The Dong with the Luminous Nose borrows its title from a nonsense song by Edward Lear (1871). The song depicts the heartbroken Dong, who is left behind at a beach, longing for his ‘Jumbly Girl’. He designs a device to communicate his loss: “ the luminous nose”. Just as this nonsense rhyme, Vasiljeva touches up on subjects as grief, madness, eros, dismemberment and fragmentation.

In her installations Vasiljeva plays with the absence of hierarchy, not preferring one perspective or point of view over the other. The time space within Vasiljeva’s exhibitions is irrelevant, there is no beginning or end; cartoonish, puzzled, absurd and burlesque characters are present, but do not lead the story through a narrative. The visitor is the protagonist.

Looiersgracht 60 is delighted to present ‘Imprinted Mater’, the first major institutional exhibition of work by Dutch-Argentine artist Aimée Zito Lema. Zito Lema has created site-specific installations and video works that explore the transferal of memory and the ways in which history is recorded and remembered. She plays with the possibilities and choices involved in the documentation of an event and how this can be manipulated or interpreted. The artist uses her own memory as a personal archive, alongside images associated with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who lost their children during the dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. Combining personal experiences with pressing socio-political issues, Zito Lema creates poignant and immediate artwork that grapples with questions about the political and human functions of art.

Because most of the cosmos is compost is a healing space of relaxation, reflection, and hospitality. Our world today is filled with a sense of rotting in the air. But there is hope that we are just composting, going through the shit so we can arrive to a new fertility; a new space of joyful growth.

In order to activate the juices of the compost energy, the exhibition is filled with cozy couches, air filtering NASA plants, a bar serving a potion for improving artistic capacities, a cosmic sauna, and several sweaty events are organized. You are invited to come hydrate, use the Saunra (a sauna with the music of Sun Ra inside of a Fiat Multipla), or request a private Obsessy session – where you touch sassy abstract objects and talk.

David will live at the exhibition and perform during opening hours. Obsessys are available throughout the duration of the exhibition by walk-in or scheduled appointments.

Every Thursday night the exhibition will be open until 1:00 AM for evening sauna sessions where an invited guest will make a presentation.

David Bernstein (1988, San Antonio, Texas) is an artist based in Brussels and Amsterdam. He combines performance, sculpture, and writing to tell stories through objects.

monique ijsseldijk P/////AKTPOOL: or a story that persists in the belly of another – part 2

Sep 10 - Oct 8, 2017

It may take a long time, it may take a short time, but you will be having a conversation with me

(….)
Jozeph: Beautiful… (hesitant) Neat umm…
Monique: There’s one artwork here.
Jozeph: Yes okay. Tell me something…
Monique: (imperious) Have a look first.
Jozeph: Yes, I think that’s a little bit… umm… umm… Take it apart, will you.
Monique: Do you remember those gloves?
Jozeph: (confident) Yes! Yeah! I remember that. Yes! Beautiful, right? Amazing.
Monique: Well, and these small planks that I sawed… The wood is from your studio. And this thingy here is from your studio. It belonged to some sort of small frame you had.
Jozeph: Yeah, yeah, beautiful, right? All these small things that you take notice of…
Monique: And the shade of red of that wooden shape, it’s the same red as your…
Jozeph: Yes, beautiful, amazing!
Monique: … studio door. And the shape of this one…
Man: You should have become a cyclist, like your father said…
Monique: … sawed parts. I will explain that as well when we get upstairs, how I got those.
Jozeph: Yes, alright… Yeah, it’s quite nice.
Monique: Yes…
Man: You should have become a cyclist, like your father said. You should have become a cyclist, like your father said. You should have become a cyclist, like your father said.
Monique: Can you understand that?
Man: You should have become a cyclist, like your father said…
Monique: (slowly and over-articulating) You should have become a cyclist, like your father said.
Jozeph: I see.
Man: You should have become a cyclist, like your father said.
Jozeph: Nice, isn’t it.
Man: Stubborn bastard.
Jozeph: Yes, wonderful. Yes.
Jozeph: You have to tell me more about this, about those gloves.
Monique: (surprised) Those gloves? … I was wearing those gloves when I first met you.
Jozeph: I see.
Monique: I was wearing those gloves when I was busy with…
Jozeph: That doll…
Monique: That swan…
Jozeph: Yes that doll…
Monique: …making it. With the cement.
Jozeph: Yes, yes… Yes, I remember now.
Monique: And then you came in…
Jozeph: Umm, ummmm.
Monique: …in my studio. And we didn’t know each other yet. You came to introduce yourself.
Jozeph: Oh, that’s nice.
Monique: … just when I moved into my new studio at the art workshop!
Jozeph: Yes.
Monique: I was making that swan and I was wearing those gloves to protect my hands from the cement, because it’s really bad for the skin.
Jozeph: Yes, yes, yes. All those things you remember, right?
Monique: You remarked how skilful I was. And you were like duh… wow! That’s beautiful!
Jozeph: (very emotional, tears in his voice) That’s right!!
Monique: But I think it’s 5 or 6 years ago now.
Jozeph: Yeah, yeah. That’s it. Yeah, yeah…. (takes a deep breath)
Monique: And you entered my studio and I didn’t know you at all. And there was only one chair in my studio and you sat down on it. (indignant) My chair! My thinking spot, occupied by you!
Jozeph: Great, right?
Monique: And I was like duh, duh… He’s taking my chair?! It really did make me a bit angry at first.
Jozeph: Oh right, I remember that well. I can still picture it. Yes.
Monique: But it was the start of our friendship!
Jozeph: That it was. Quite wonderful.
Monique: So, those gloves. Always kept them. I’m thinking, I cannot throw them away. And now they’re part of this artwork.
Jozeph: The things you consider and all… that’s it right? That I wouldn’t, no I wouldn’t do that. I would just throw them away.
Monique: Yeah, yeah. You just throw everything away.
Jozeph: I throw…
Monique: Yes
Jozpeh: Yes, I’ve ended up in the throw-away-world.
Monique: I haven’t, I keep a lot. I’m not in a throw-away-world.
Jozeph: (emotional) Oh… please no. Right, Monique?
Monique: I like to keep things because they help me remember.
Jozeph: That’s it, isn’t it!
Monique: But you throw everything away just like that, don’t you?
Jozeph: Yeah, yeah. I’m really in umm, what do you call it, in a decayed world, get out of here. Something new has to happen.
Monique: Yes, something new each time.
Jozeph: Something new each time!
Monique: Yes.
Jozeph: But I think it’s beautiful. Great. Really beautiful.
(….)

I met Helen Mirra this summer, at the opening of her exhibition Variable Weather at andriesse eyck.

A year or so earlier, I had been asked if I knew someone who could translate a text she had written. I promised to read the piece and offer a suggestion. The text was ‘Standard Incomparable’, an invitation to participate in a project and submit weavings, woven from natural, local materials, that match the dimensions of the human body (the lenght of the weaver's arm for the piece, and the width of their hand for horizontal stripes) for an exhibition, and receive in return a piece made by a different participant. I was interested in the project because it presented opportunities for unexpected results generated by chance. The language seemed a little too complicated to me, because she was attempting to be very exact. It was, however, the reason why I immediately made a connection with conceptual art. I decided to offer my services as translator, and immersed myself in Mirra’s work.

I had come to feel an affinity with her way of thinking, which proved well-founded when we met: the precision, subtlety and humility of her presented works confirmed my expectations. It was interesting to note that, although we are from different generations, we talk about the same artists. One of her great examples is Douglas Huebler, and his Variable Works project in particular in which, for a temporary exhibition at Konrad Fischer in Dusseldorf and Galleria Sperone in Turin (1971), he hitch-hiked from France venturing either north or south, towards one of the two galleries, flipping a coin each morning to determine the direction he would take. The documentation of his northbound journey was exhibited at Konrad Fisher, and that of his southbound route at Sperone. What makes Huebler so important to me, is the manner in which he uses photography, places such emphasis on the temporal dimension, and explored the entire system of measuring and determining location. He was the first to do so in such a way. And we also talked about Ad Reinhardt, John Cage, Japan, and walking.

Mirra’ work is walking and weaving. Walking not as meditation, although it always effectuates a particular frame of mind, but as an activity that cultivates an awareness of your physical abilities and limitations. She leaves no trace in the places where she walks, nor strives to produce heroic images. No, it is all minimal and invokes reflection.

Mirra walks mostly in nature, less frequently in cities, and uses materials and images that she encounters during these walks in a very subtle way. A great deal of wood, a limited colour spectrum, references to railways, measuring systems (the distance between the sleepers that support the rails or the length from her hand to her elbow), covering and protection. The works that she presented in the summer exhibition at andriesse eyck are all entitled 'Paragraf'. They are wooden supports, meticulously constructed and painted with casein paint (derived from milk) made by the artist, and partially covered with green wool, from military blankets. You can look at the works extremely closely and be especially struck by their construction, texture, exactitude and colour. Viewed from a distance, they become small-scale paintings, abstract and restrained in both hue and form. Nothing overwhelms you, simply detail. I was reminded of the single grain of sand, in which you see the world in its totality.

The title of the series of works made clear that the focus is always on small steps; ‘paragraf’ refers to a constructed piece of writing but is, of course, usualy an element in a longer composition.

The day after I met Mirra she began her journey to Merano, where she was to exhibit her work and Standard Incomparable. At that point, she did not know which parts of the trip she would make on foot, or by train. She had three weeks to make the journey, and intended to throw a coin each day, and let chance decide for her.

In the meantime, I know that everything went smoothly, she reached Merano on time, and without stress.

The title of her current exhibition is Voluntary Weathering. Which, again, is highly suggestive: weathering is defined as the various processes – such as temperature and flora – that cause exposed rock to decompose. Things you observe during walks. And she is able consciously to transmute those observations into documents that invite contemplation.

“Now, this image of ourselves is obviously not ourselves, anymore than an idea of a tree is a tree, anymore than you can get wet in the word water.” - Alan Watts quoted in ‘Two Way Mirror,’ a two channel video installation by David Haines

Upstream Gallery presents A Fragile Membrane, an Illusive Screen a solo exhibition of new works on paper, wall drawings and two channel video by British/ Dutch artist David Haines.

Every new medium is a Russian doll. The radio and the cinema sit inside every television, just as the television sits inside your smart phone. Because there have been so many Russian dolls over the years, each containing the other, it’s easy to forget that the mirror is a medium, or that the simple act of making marks on paper is a technology. David Haines invites us to consider these things in the reflection of the black mirror.(1) We carry the black mirror everywhere. It blindly reflects our image when it sleeps and every time we wake it up (with the swipe of a finger) it illuminates our desires. It sorts our personal chaos into order. The black mirror is a good servant. It files, classifies, orientates, and informs. In this respect the black mirror surpasses its master. Because the black mirror’s actions are unconscious, it is able to chart a map of the unconscious.

In a group of portraits, images taken from a cam sex site, a series of young men look at themselves. The view is parallax, Narcissus is refracted. A man, his face in repose, gazes at the camera on his laptop. To see himself he must look away from the eye that records his image. We see a boss-eyed double image through the layers of mediation, the video and the shiny glass, the code churning unconsciously beneath the surface.

We never see ourselves, and when we see ourselves the image we see is not part of us. You might catch your image on the surface of a still pond. You may surprise your self as you lope past a shop window; your image may move unexpectedly on a Skype call; you may see your ghost on the black mirror of a sleeping smart phone. Our image is always mediated, always de-centered. Our image is reserved for others and implicitly addressed to others. Because the black mirror extends us and because it surrounds us we forget that, like every interactive technology, the black mirror is a technology of self. It records an image of us whilst simultaneously constructing us, presenting us, and teaching us how to behave.

A series of Trompe-l'œil drawings, Still Lifes with Flyers, are unlike Haines’ other portraits, they do not survey an interior, subjective, space. The bodies are on display, they project an image produced explicitly for others. But the medium on which the image is carried tells a specific history. It records the wear and tear of being folded, it tells the story of its circulation as a medium; this is in turn translated into a drawing.

A further series of still life drawings, this time with iPads, screens, cutouts, meat and bones takes this abstraction further. This is not a formal abstraction – in the sense that they divert from realistic depiction or break down into simple forms – but rather they invite us to read images of ‘real things’ on different registers: as things in ‘real space,’ as reflections of those things, as two dimensional cut-outs nested within a prospective three dimensional space. In the two large drawings Meatboy and Bob Starr and Your Fluffer the moiré pattern (the matrix of the printed image) slips between the register of dots and the register of an image. This is set against figures of a much finer definition where graphite and the grain of the paper tangle in a tight net of information.(2)

As we travel through the different levels of abstraction the subject is mediated and remediated. Of course, the image is not the thing it depicts, any more than the menu can be mistaken for the meal, or the map mistaken for the territory it charts.

In Haines’ work every medium reflects another but this does not leave us abandoned in a hall of mirrors because we are grounded in the materiality of the drawings, we are drawn to the specificity of the medium – this particular sheet of paper, these specific particles of graphite.

If every image draws us to a receding horizon, beyond which the ‘real thing’ is situated, in Haines’ work we comprehend the different levels of abstraction that allow us to negotiate with the reflection of ourselves that is always fugitive, always extensive: a projection, a reflection, an image in process.

Steve Rushton, August 2017
Steve Rushton’s Masters of Reality is published by Stemberg Press

(1) Charlie Brooker on his TV show Black Mirror: “If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects?” The Guardian 1/12/2011
(2) Here I use ‘abstraction’ in the sense Gregory Bateson’s used it in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1980). Bateson’s notion of abstraction provides the basis for a holistic aesthetic and ecological epistemology. Bateson identifies Alfred Korzybski as the originator of the phrase the map is not the territory.

This autumn, EYE Filmmuseum is staging a major exhibition of work by two prominent film artists: Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Cao Guimarães. Their celebrated work evokes a world that blends dream, sensory experience and reality.

Renowned for his dreamlike, sensual feature films, Thai artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970) also creates video installations, photographs and experimental documentaries that transcend the boundaries of cinema. Brazilian artist Cao Guimarães (b. 1965) is primarily known for his short films and video installations, but he also makes remarkable feature films and photographic works.

Steeped in their local situations, both Weerasethakul and Guimarães draw inspiration from the landscapes, stories, history and socio-political conditions in their respective countries, while their work also explores memory, time, friendship and human dignity.

Guimarães and Weerasethakul are kindred artistic souls who take the mundane reality around them as the starting point for their work, but it requires an exceptionally trained eye to reveal its beauty, colours, rhythms, light, sounds and smells. Both artists make humane works that raise the ‘ordinary’ to another level, evoking a sensual world that invites observers to immerse themselves and escape from their limited and often rational way of thinking.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, honoured with the 2016 Prince Claus Award, has taken part in major film festivals in Venice, Rotterdam, Toronto and Cannes, where he won a Golden Palm for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. He was a participating artist at documenta 13 in Kassel (2012) and at various biennales, and has had major presentations at, among others, Haus der Kunst in Munich, the New Museum in New York and Tate Modern in London.

Most of Weerasethakul’s films, photographs, experimental videos and film installations are set in the north-east of Thailand, where he grew up. Weerasethakul is interested in the history, memory and sensory experience of this region. In his world there is no distinction between present and past, between visible reality and dreamed truth. Many of his works feature ‘spirits’ — ancestors, wood nymphs, figures from ancient legends or mythical stories. The seemingly casual way they form part of his filmed reality shows that, for Weerasethakul, they are no strangers but simply part of life.

The exhibition Locus: Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Cao Guimarães includes his large film installation Primitive, which consists of eight short and slightly longer ‘mini films’ or ‘sketches’ that capture the lives of a number of teenagers in Nabua, a small village in the north-east of Thailand. In the 1960s and 70s, this village was the scene of battle between Thai military forces and local civilians who were accused of being communist or having communist sympathies. In this village ‘full of repressed memories’, Weerasethakul films teenagers who gather to chat, play football and daydream. Just like in all his work, this film demonstrates his attentive eye, his protracted shots, his heightened sensitivity to both natural and artificial light, and his ability to subtly invite viewers to reflect on their own lives and on the deeper layers beneath everyday existence.

Cao Guimarães
The work of Cao Guimarães has featured at major film festivals around the world, including Locarno, Cannes, Rotterdam, Sundance and Venice, and it has been exhibited and acquired by prominent museums such as the Tate Modern in London, Guggenheim Museum in New York, Inhotim Institute in Belo Horizonte, Jumex collection in Mexico City and Fondation Cartier in Paris. Like Weerasethakul, Guimarães has a keen eye for small occurrences, objects, colours and sounds that normally go unnoticed. The power of Guimarães lies in revealing the casual poetry in the ordinary. His films are populated by minuscule insects, soap bubbles, raindrops, petals falling on the ground, footprints, bits of fluff floating in the air. He is drawn to those places where people live but are often overlooked, people who avoid the predictably structured lives we are expected to live in modern capitalist society. Not only people on the fringes of society, drifters and hermits, but also children who, to him, represent the freedom to live as you want, free of any rules of behaviour and full of uncertainty about how to proceed. Guimarães presents us with alternative ways of living, offering us space to break free from our own structured lives.

Other important elements in his work are the landscape and natural phenomena such as sunlight, weather and reflections of light on water. We also see that the relationship between people and their natural environment is not a hierarchical one but a natural connection.

The work of Cao Guimarães is situated at the interface between cinema and art. Self-taught, he pays little heed to prevailing conventions and predictable forms of filmmaking. Although documentary by nature, his images seem to float between familiar reality and a world in which the senses enjoy free reign and – just as in the work of Weerasethakul – break free from rational considerations. In that way, Guimarães’ images evoke a world that blends dream, sensual experience and reality.

Publications
Accompanying the exhibition are two publications, both designed by Irma Boom in the spirit of the artists’ work and richly illustrated, with essays by Consuelo Lins and Dana Linssen. They are published in collaboration with nai010 publishers in Rotterdam, which is also in charge of national and international distribution.

Films, talks, events
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, various films, artist talks and events will take place in the cinemas. The complete programme is currently being compiled.

Foam Talent
20 international young artists
1 September – 12 November 2017

Foam is proud to present the work of twenty new Foam Talents. The annual Talent Call is an international search for exceptionally talented photographers under the age of 35. The submissions form an intriguing barometer of current developments in contemporary photography. The Foam Talent programme is a career building platform that helps launch aspiring image-makers into the international photography industry, giving them global acclaim and recognition. Many artists once selected as Foam Talent are now established names in photography. From 1 September until 12 November 2017 Foam presents the work of the twenty selected artists in the museum in Amsterdam, after which the exhibition will travel internationally.

The selected photographers are: Sushant Chhabria (India), David De Beyter (France), Mark Dorf (USA), Alinka Echeverría (Mexico/UK), Weronika Gęsicka (Poland), Wang Juyan (China), Thomas Kuijpers (The Netherlands), Quentin Lacombe (France), Clément Lambelet (Switzerland), Namsa Leuba (Switzerland/Guinea), Erik Madigan Heck (USA), Alix Marie (France), Martin Errichiello & Filippo Menichetti (Italy), Wang Nan (China), Kai Oh (South Korea), Viacheslav Poliakov (Ukraine), Ben Schonberger (USA), Sadegh Souri (Iran), Harit Srikhao (Thailand) and Vasantha Yogananthan (France).
Barometer
The submissions constitute a cross section of the various ways in which contemporary photographers approach the ever-evolving photographic medium and reveal a series of growing trends and tendencies. Many of the featured artists express socio-political concerns in their work. Hari Srikhao comments on the divine status of the monarchy in his homeland Thailand, while Thomas Kuipers researches how online imagery feeds a collective fear of terrorism. Questions of identity and representation remain important themes for a new generation of photographers. This becomes apparent in the vulnerable and at times grotesque visualization of the body by Alix Marie. As well as in the radiant studio portraits of Namsa Leuba, who draws on her Guinese origin. This year a striking number of long term projects were included, that acquired greater depth of meaning over time. Vasantha Yogananthan travelled the length of India, tracing the footsteps of the Hindu deity Rama. The monumental Chinese landscapes by Wang Juyan are constructed from aerial photographs he made over the course of several years. Equally striking is that today’s emerging photographers embrace a wide range of media in their practice, and rarely confine themselves to the camera alone. Examples are the extensive car wreck installations of David de Beyter and the photo sculptures by Mark Dorf. Through a myriad of subjects and techniques, this new generation of inspiring photographers reflects on the nature, history and development of the photographic medium.
Première and international tour
In recent years the Foam Talent exhibition, based on the annual Foam Magazine Talent Issue, travelled internationally to cities such as Paris, Brussels, New York and London. This year, the work of the selected photographers will tour again, starting with an exhibition at Foam.

Official opening
From 1 September, the first Foam Talent exhibition will be on view at the museum in Amsterdam, running until 12 November 2017. On Friday 22 September the exhibition will be officially opened in the presence of the artists. On this occasion the new Talent Issue of Foam Magazine, which serves as an exhibition catalogue, will be officially presented.
> Check the video here
The annual Foam Magazine Talent Issue and the related Talent Programme are supported by the Niemeijer Fund.
Foam Magazine is sponsored by Igepa Netherlands BV, supplier of excellent paper. The Foam Talent exhibition is made possible with support from Kleurgamma Fine-Art Photolab and Starframe.
Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Delta Lloyd, City of Amsterdam, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation.